Wednesday, June 9

Hay que hacer mi tarea

Someone should do my homework....I guess that someone is probably me. A friend and I (ok, it's Hi-C...this blog makes it sound like she is my only friend!), we have been taking a Spanish class on Wednesday nights. It is so refreshing to be (at least minimally) interacting in el español. This lesson brought up a very useful expression. The "hint hint, nudge nudge"expression. Basically equivalent to the English "boy, someone should probably wash the dishes...."

Useful ones:Hay que limpiar el piso (the elusive someone should wash the floor).Hay que sacar la basura (boy, that garbage can is getting full....it would be great if someone took out the garbage)Hay que ayudarlo (someone should help him but it isn't gonna be me).

Now you are proficient. The other fun tense is the "it's not my fault" tense/expression. Similar to the English "I was using your new hair straightener and, oh no, it broke....all on it's own...nothing I did...." So we have this handy expression in English but it isn't as versatile or acceptable. For example: Se chocó el carro! "You wouldn't believe what happened, I was driving and the car just crashed (itself)".

And, should we continue the linguistic theme of this post or no? Am I the only one who has started noticing this odd question structure more and more or no? Where is it from? It drives me insane, yet I find myself using this peculiar construction sometimes. I believe it should be "not" in place of "no". Could it possibly be another language influencing the structure of English in present-age? Or is this not a fairly new development and it just all of a sudden started bothering me.....I need an answer and googling "or no?" has been fairly ineffective.